


Hoping a Better Place is All I Need

by ephemeraa



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Hale Fire, Angst, Codependency, Fluff and Angst, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Lots of Angst, M/M, Medical Conditions, Medical Procedures, Mentions of Cancer, New York, Roommates, Seizures, Single Parent Derek, Single Parent Stiles Stilinski, Single Parents, Slow Burn, sick kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:13:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2502425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeraa/pseuds/ephemeraa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So,” Stiles starts. “What’s wrong with your kid?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SO ON TUMBLR I was like "I wish someone would write an AU about Stiles and Derek being the parents of sick kids and meeting in the hospital and falling in love etc." BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, I'm just going to seize the moment an do it my damn self. 
> 
> I will try to post any triggering tags at the end of each chapter. If you need something tagged, never be afraid to ask me. I am here 4 u pal. 
> 
> I try my best, but this is unbeta-ed and all mistakes are mine. Title comes from City and Color's song "Waiting". Go listen and be sad.

Derek’s life changes very fast one day, on a Thursday afternoon.

Like any ordinary day, he picks Tally up from school and they go to the park for a bit. He gives her half a banana and some goldfish crackers as they walk. She tugs him in the direction of the new park, the one down the street from the school, despite it being half an hour out of the way. Apparently the park nearest to their house is “dumb” and has “gross old monkey bars”, and the new park has saucer shaped swings that are “way cooler, Dad.” He’s not good at saying no to her, not when it comes to the little stuff.

When it happens, Tally is racing Oscar, a park regular, around the jungle gym while  Derek struggles to keep up with Oscar’s mom, who speaks in rapid Spanish. He focuses on mentally translating every curse word and complaint about the other moms at the park., and that’s probably why he doesn’t register at first that Tally has stopped laughing and yelling at Oscar.

One minute, they’re just having a perfectly normal Thursday, and the next, Tally is shaking on the floor of the playground like she’s being throttled. Derek’s heart stops entirely

The Paramedics call it a seizure in the ambulance and Derek’s entire world folds up inside that one word. They ask him questions about drugs, about allergies, about her age and weight. He answers all of them, shaking, smoothing her hair from her sleeping face. Talia Hale, eight years old, no history of epilepsy or seizures, no allergies. Derek just asks,

“Why won’t she wake up?”

Tally does wake up when they’re in the hospital, wheeling her gurnie through the emergency room. She cries, calling out for him, and he nearly pushes the paramedic down in order to get into her space, but she can’t move her neck because they’ve secured it and so she wails and calls for him.

“I’m right here, baby.”

He struggles to keep up with the doctors and nurses wheeling pushing her down the hall, but he won’t leave her. He won’t. They will have to physically restrain him.

It turns out that he’s allowed to be present for all the tests. Tally keeps crying through it all, no matter what the nurses and doctors say. Convincing her to lie still for the CT scan is the most difficult part. She’s a champ when they take her blood, though, because they give her a new stuffed animal-- a pig that she names Lola.

“She doesn’t seem sick. She seems fine,” he says to the doctor once they’ve set her up in the pediatric ward. The walls are lined with peeling wallpaper covered in zoo animals and there are rows of beds separated by curtains. Tally sits in the middle of hers playing with the stick-on monitors measuring her brain activity that are attached to her forehead. Derek motions for her to stop before she pulls one off.

“Seizures can sometimes leave little trace that they ever happened. We really won’t know what we’re dealing with until we have our neurologist take a look at the scans. It’s possible that Tally is showing signs of epilepsy, but there are other factors to consider. Other things we need to rule out.”

Derek’s heart hasn’t been beating properly all day. He finds it suddenly difficult to talk, inclining his head as if to say, “other things like what?”

“We never assume the worst, but it’s possible that a growth could be stopping Tally’s electrical impulses from working properly.”

“A growth like a tumor?” He says the word _tumor_ quietly, under his breath, so Tally won’t hear. It’s not a word he wants to have in her vocabulary.

“Yes. But Mr. Hale, I want to stress that you don’t panic. It’s very well possible that this was an anomaly. We’re going to watch her over the next few days, wait for the lab results and hopefully we can have a proper diagnosis and treatment. Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”

Derek thinks, _why is this happening_? but he shakes his head.

They have a quiet life. They have each other. They have Laura who brings dinner over almost every week. They have Cora’s bi-annual visits from Costa Rica and the shelf on Tally’s wall lined with the souvenirs she’s brought her over the years. They have “attitude problems” according to Tally’s teacher at parent night. They have a pet hamster named Molly. They have Tally’s friends who sometimes sleep over, staying up too late playing Pokemon on the Nintendo DS. They have her friends’ moms who always try to hit on Derek when they collect their tired children in the morning. They have a tent set up in the backyard right now because Tally is currently fixated on camping. They have Scouts registration scheduled for next week because she wants to learn how to build a fire and live in the woods. They’re not supposed to have seizures, and ambulances, and doctors, and scans.

“Dad, can I have chocolate milk?” Tally asks later, when they’re sitting watching an old VHS of Spy Kids on the television mounted to the wall. He hasn’t been paying attention to anything on the TV. He’s been staring at the monitors attached to his daughter, replaying the moment he turned around at the park, the sight of her little body shaking. Her voice brings him out of it.

“Daaaaaad,” she repeats.

“If I go ask the nurse for some will you be okay on your own?”

“I got Lola.” She shakes the stuffed pig in his face. When he sits up from the uncomfortable chair, he gives her a kiss on the forehead that she promptly wipes off.

Out in the hall, Derek makes it to the coffee and vending machines before it hits him-- where he is right now, what he’s doing here. He just wants to take Tally and run. It’s the same way he felt after the fire, needing to scoop her up and not look back. It’s an overwhelming need to protect her, like an instinct that every nerve in his body screams for. He can’t do anything. He can’t make test results come in sooner and even if he could, he can’t fix whatever’s wrong. He presses his palms against the glass of the vending machine, breathing through his nose slowly. He can get his daughter chocolate milk. That’s one thing he can do.

Except, when the milk drops down, it gets stuck on its way. Derek lets out a snarl of anger, slamming his fist on the glass hard enough to break it.

“Whoa there.”

He jerks around. He didn’t realize someone was there. It’s a tall guy with wildly messy hair and he holds a cup of coffee aloft, one hand lifted up in what looks like caution. He has bags under his eyes and rumpled clothes, like he’d been sleeping not five minutes ago. Derek tries to pull the pieces of himself back together in order to say something, but he can’t quite catch his breath. The guy takes a teetering step forward while Derek takes a step back.

“Are you okay, man?”

“I’m-”

“I can get that out for you if you’d like. I’m a vending machine expert. Master, even.” He points at the milk that’s lodged between the glass and the row of coke. Derek doesn’t know what to do, so he sidesteps away, his chest still heaving, breath still coming short. The guy wordlessly hands him his coffee and starts feeding coins into the machine, pressing buttons. He knocks the chocolate milk down with a bottle of iced tea.

“There you go,” he says, trading the coffee for the carton “No need to cry over stuck milk.”

Again Derek doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure he can.

“Okay, you gotta give me credit for that one, come on.”

“Thanks a lot,” he manages to say. There’s an awkward moment of silence after that. Derek looks down at his shoes, wanting to exit.

“Bad news?” the guy asks. When Derek doesn’t respond immediately, the guy continues, “You’re a stressed adult in the children’s ward of the hospital. I know the look.”  

“Just…” Derek looks down the hall, where the nursing station is. “Waiting on some results.”

“Waiting is the hardest part. Trust me. Once you get the news, no matter what it is, it will be easier. You just deal with it.”

There’s something troublingly honest in his eyes, softening around the corners. Derek’s instincts usually tell him to blow off anyone who threatens to impose on his personal life. You’re _so stubborn, so shy_ his mother used to say. Instead, despite how goddamn personal this whole situation is to him, Derek heeds his advice.

The guy disappears down the hall to some room that must have a sick child inside it. Derek tries to remember what he said as he walks back to that sad room with Tally’s milk, tries to remember the inflection in his voice, the air of experience. He tries to remember later that night, when Tally has another seizure halfway through her chocolate milk. The nurses monitor her while it rocks through her body. Derek feels frozen above his kid, watching the chocolate milk stain on the front of her shirt as it trembles with her torso. _Just deal with it_ , he thinks as the nurses change Tally’s gown.

He doesn’t sleep that night, sitting up in the chair beside her bed. He watches the monitors and machines beep. He watches other parents come and go in the semi-darkness of the shared room. He watches the children sleeping in beds all around him, some of them inevitably dying, he’s sure. It makes him sick to know it, to meet those parents eyes for just a second. _I don’t want to be one of them_ , he thinks secretly.

The next morning, he just deals with it when the neurologist walks him through the image of the CT scan. Even with no medical knowledge, Derek can notice the dark spot shadowed on the picture of her temporal lobe. The doctor has small hands, sharp cheekbones, but soft eyes and she breaks it down slowly in laymans terms for Derek-- why the growth is causing the seizures, what it possibly could be. Cancerous or benign. Aggressive, maybe. Maybe not.

“Okay,” he sighs. “Okay, what’s the next step.”

“We’ll do a biopsy. It’s minimally invasive, but it requires some surgery. Tally will have to be awake, but she won’t feel a thing. You’ll be in there with her to keep her calm.”

He just deals with it, with signing the forms for the procedure. After, he calls Laura, reiterates what the doctor said, and she starts to cry.

“I’m downtown, but I’m coming. I’m getting the subway. I’m coming right now.”

“Can you go to the house first? Get her some clothes. PJs. She wants her Buzz Lightyear toothbrush. And her NIntendo.”

“Yeah. Yeah of course. God, Derek…”

“You have to be calm when you get here, alright? I don’t want to scare her any more than she already is.”

Laura hangs up when she goes underground and Derek ducks back into the shared pediatric space. Tally will move to a double room after the biopsy. Derek wishes for the first time in a long while that he was back in Beacon Hills. The hospitals in New York are all overcrowded, and unless you have the insurance, private rooms aren’t really an option, even for kids. The Beacon County hospital was more vacant, more intimate. The doctors checked up constantly, even with Peter in a coma and there seemed to be no reason to. Derek feels lucky to have talked to a doctor today at all.

“Are we going home now?” she asks when Derek sits beside her on the bed. She shuffles over so he can lie next to her.

“C’mere,” he grunts and she folds up against him, clunking her head down on his chest harder than necessary. “We can’t go home yet. We have to sleep over for a little while.”

“I wanna go home.”

“Me too.” He notices that she’s begun to blink furiously. Tally usually doesn’t cry. She likes to scream and stomp and slam doors. When she cries, she blinks and blinks as if she can get angry enough at the tears to make them stop. “Hey now. We might as well have fun while we’re here.”

“No, it’s stupid. This is a stupid bed and the movies on the TV are STUPID. Lola is Stupid.” She throws the pig on the ground to make her point.

“I know, but Aunt Laura is bringing your DS soon.”

She heaves a deep sigh, dramatic as ever. Derek takes the opportunity to blow a raspberry on her cheek. She giggles and swats at him,

“Groooss!”

He does it again and she laughs even harder. The laughter evolves into a yawn and she plops her head back on Derek’s chest.

“Nap time,” he declares. Tally nods, eyes slipping closed. She was always great with sleeping and naps. She loves sleep. When she was a baby, she would pass out in his arms, pass out on the changing table, and with a bottle still in her mouth. When Derek tells her it’s bedtime, she always rushes to put on her pyjamas. The babysitter loves her for it.

“Wait--” she says suddenly, voice on edge. She scoots away from him and reaches over the side of the bed, where Lola fell.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into the pigs little ear. She thinks that Derek didn’t hear, but he did. With Lola back in her arms, she falls asleep, tucked into her Dad’s shoulder.

Derek also nods off for a while. When he wakes up, it’s to Laura’s hand on his shoulder. She’s got red, puffy, concerned eyes and bags full of things from his house. He touches his finger to his lips to make sure she’s quiet because Tally is still asleep on his chest. He gently unfurls her from his side and slips out of the bed, beckoning Laura out into the hall.

She drops the bags and embraces him as soon as they’re under the flourescent lighting. She sniffles into his chest.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s just napping.”

Laura’s shaky breath ebbs away at the careful, calm wall he’s put up overnight. He backs away from her, trying to hold onto it.

“She’s going to be okay,” Laura states, as if she knows. She doesn’t know anything. Neither does Derek. He understands that he’s not really processing it, not really ready for the procedure to happen tomorrow. It all feels fake, somehow, like a movie set.

“I still have to explain what’s happening to her. They’re going to shave a part of her head. She’ll love that.” At the last haircut appointment, Tally threw a fit, almost getting her ear sliced in the process. Showing her the movie _Tangled_ had been a grave mistake. She’d let that unruly Hale hair grow into a giant dreadlock if Derek would let her. “I have to call Cora. And the school, fuck. They’ll wonder where she is.” He slides his hands over his face. “And the insurance. They need the paperwork filled out by tonight. And I have to call the department and get someone to cover my classes.”

“I’ll help you, okay? I’ll talk to Dena tomorrow.” Laura also works at NYU, but in the Physics Department. Dena is the other professor for the freshmen classes in History. She’ll be a good replacement for now because her classes don’t start until next semester, and she knows all of Derek’s lectures and slides and syllabi.

Laura reaches for his hand. It’s one of those rare sentimental moments between them that makes Derek’s skin crawl because they almost always happen in crisis. She had this same look on her face at the funeral, with Cora pressed tightly to her side, crying and reaching for him the same way. He can’t stand it.

“I’m gonna get some coffee. Can you watch her?”

Laura’s face adjusts back as he steps away. He has to get away from the grief before it gets him. There’s nothing to grieve yet. He tries to tell himself this, but it’s hard when Laura looks the same way she did sitting in Sheriff Stilinski office 8 years ago, crying in her pyjamas and and her NYU sweater, having flown and driven all night to get home to the house that the firefighters had worked all night to extinguish. He swears to God, looking at her, he can smell smoke. So Derek escapes to the coffee machine, where the smell of cheap arabica overwhelms him instead.

Turning around with the coffee in hand, he spots the guy from last night walking toward him.

“You know there’s a Starbucks in the food court downstairs. Don’t do this to yourself,” he says, pointing to the coffee in Derek’s hand. “It tastes like fucking mud.”

Derek sips it as if to prove that he doesn’t care what the quality of the caffeine is, but the guy is 100% right. It’s the worst coffee he’s ever had in his life.

“Come on, I’ll buy you one.”

Derek is reluctant to leave the pediatric floor and the guy must sense this.

“You’re wife’s here now, right? I’m sure you can take five minutes.” He gestures to Laura, who is talking to a nurse, still outside of the room where Tally sleeps.

“That’s my sister.”

He ends up going anyway, texting Laura as they descend in the elevator.

“I’m Stiles,” he says. “By the way.”

“Derek.”

Stiles guides him around the labyrinth of hallways and wards like he lives here until they near the smell of coffee and burnt toast that marks the food court. There are lots of people here. Nurses sitting together, laughing and talking animatedly on their lunch breaks. There’s a scattering of people in wheelchairs, eating slowly with their heads down. A family sits in a far table, all of them upset, the mother crying into the open cup of coffee in front of her. Derek feels like the room is shadowed by a massive grey cloud.

Some nurses wave to Stiles and the barista knows his order by heart. He gets Derek a grande black coffee with an extra espresso shot. Derek grunts a thank you in response.

They don’t sit down, they stand around the refrigerators that have pre-made salads and sandwiches within.

“So,” Stiles starts. “What’s wrong with your kid?”

It’s brash and untactful, but Derek doesn’t feel offended. There’s no beating around the bush, here, and he likes it, likes that he doesn’t have to make pretend that everything is okay when it really isn’t. He takes a fresh breath.

“She had a seizure at the park yesterday. Keeps having them. And they scanned her head--”

“Tumor?” Stiles interjects. Derek nods.

“They’re going to figure out what it is tomorrow. Biopsy. I don’t know…” he shakes himself. He shouldn’t be spilling all this to someone he doesn’t know.

“What?”

“Its just...baby tricks don’t work on her anymore. I can’t just- just make up some story, tell her that we’re going into a spaceship or something. She’s eight. She’s a smart ass. As soon as she gets in that operating room, she’s going know they’re doing to her head. She’s going to freak out.”  

“I guess I’m luckier there. Ben’s only five. He still thinks that there’s little men inside the heart monitor making it beep with tiny horns.”

Derek knew. He knew there was a baby in a room upstairs that belonged to him.

“What’s wrong with your kid?”

Stiles glances up, like he’s searching for the right words. He shakes his head a little.

“Long story short: we’re waiting on a heart.”

“Fuck,” Derek sighs. He shakes his head. “Sorry, I--”

“No. No, _fuck_ is right.” Stiles takes a sip of his obscenely sugary coffee. “ _Fuck_ is the only that keeps me going some days. Like I said, waiting is the hardest part.”

After that, there isn’t much else to say. They go upstairs with their coffee and they go their separate ways in the hall. Derek thanks him.

“I’ll see you around,” Stiles says. His hand comes up, rests on Derek’s shoulder for a tense moment. Derek can see straight through Stiles, straight through his face. There are phantom lines around his mouth, laugh lines that haven’t been used in a while, he bets. The rings around his eyes are as complex as the heartwood of a tree. Derek thinks, _is that what I look like?_

That night, a nurse named Anhiti, who wears turquoise scrubs decorated in little ducks, sits down with Tally and Derek and Laura to explain the procedure. She’s funny, soft around the edges like Tally’s teacher. She makes it sound less scary She has a little sculpture of the human brain that can be taken apart. Tally gets lost in pulling the frontal lobe away from the brainstem.

“And when it’s all done, Aunt Cora’s going to be here with presents,” Laura says.

Tally is nearly excited for the biopsy.

Of course, that all changes when they’re in the big blue room, when Derek puts on the scrubs and the mask and the shower cap. Tally almost screams when they secure her head with the metal bolts and frames. They have sterile distraction toys laid out. They have child friendly cue cards that a nurse quizzes Tally on throughout to make sure her verbal skills are still functioning. The sound of the saw is the worst part. Tally meets his eyes, pure fear running through them.while the saw drones on in the background. She whimpers and Derek feels helpless, can’t help her. The nurse says something reassuring, but Derek fails at this part.

He’s going to fail at it all. He can’t do this.

Afterward, Tally sleeps for hours in the recovery station. Derek doesn’t stir from his spot by her bed. Out in the hall, he sees Laura gesticulating wildly on the phone, probably arranging time off with the university for the both of them, which is difficult to do. It’s NYU. He hopes this warrants an exception.

“Did you talk to Dena?” he asks quietly when she comes in.

“You’re good. Just call to check in every once and a while.” She huffs frustratedly. “I, on the other hand, am only allowed two sick days.”

“You should get back to work, Laur. We’ll be okay.” He doesn’t tell her that he wishes she would disappear for a while. He shouldn't feel that way about family, not his family, but Cora is on her way and Laura is already here, will be here for a while, and it’s suffocating him. Looking at Tally asleep with the gauze wrapped around her head, he wants to shut out the entire world, find a nice dark corner to fall asleep in.

“I’m not going anywhere yet.” Laura plants herself in the seat adjacent to the bed.

“You should go home. They’ve got pull out cots for parents in the room. I’m just gonna crash there for the night. I should sleep, too.” He says this to appease her because he knows sleep will be next to impossible, that he’ll be up every hour to check that she’s still there, still breathing.

Laura sighs, shakily, shakily, shakily.

“Get something to eat, okay?” she says, standing up. “I mean it.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She bends over Tally and kisses her for a long moment, then moves to kiss Derek on the cheek like she hasn’t done in years. It almost stings.

Not long after that, a nurse comes to take them to Tally’s semi-permanent room, pulling up the bars of the bed and wheeling her away. Derek closely follows the bed back to the pediatric ward. They go into a mostly dark room that has a television on a cart playing an episode of Little Einsteins that Derek has seen three times thanks to Laura and her habit of buying Tally box sets of her favorite shows. The curtain is mostly drawn, separating Derek and Tally from the family sharing the room, but he can see the outline of a bed and a small shape of a child sitting up. It’s late, way past any normal kid’s bedtime, but Derek figures that these kids get spoils and perks for being here in the first place. Tomorrow, he’ll make sure Tally gets a strawberry sundae for breakfast like she was promised before the biopsy.

Once all of Tally’s machines are hooked back up, monitors placed on the sides of her temples, the nurse shows Derek how the pull-out bed works. It’s an uncomfortable looking padded chair that slides out to be one long chaise lounge style bed. They bring him a pillow and some standard hospital blankets for the night. He’s so tired that he doesn’t bother fitting the sheet. He just lies back with the pillow, eyes trained on Tally’s chest, counting each breath as it rises and falls.

He wonders if this will be their life now. No more fighting over bath soap and bedtime stories. A nurse may come to sponge bathe her tomorrow, they said. No more “accidentally” leaving Molly’s cage open so that she can sleep and poop in Tally’s bed. They don’t allow animals on this ward. He can see it so clearly, the way the months will unravel if that biopsy comes back with red flags. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. He repeats the word in his head over and over until it just becomes a sound.

God, he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want this at all, ever. This fucking black spot in the periphery. It’s going to sink him far more than the fire ever did. It’s going to bury him at the bottom of the ocean, burn him to charred little bits. Laura would call it “jumping the gun”, but she wasn’t there to watch them dig into his baby’s brain. She didn’t see her convulsing like she was possessed by something terrible. He’s so weak from it already. He wonders if somewhere, Kate is laughing at him...

If this is it, if this is all the time he gets with her, then it will kill him plain and simple. What a scary realization that is. What a fucking transparencey about him. It’s getting dark, and not because the lights have turned off, not because Derek is falling asleep.

“Hey,” someone says. He snaps out of it like a bucket of ice water to the face. He’d barely registered that the curtain had opened.

Stiles sits in an identical pull out next to the boy watching Little Einsteins. His face is dunked in sleep, covered in concern, pulling Derek out of the tailspin in his head.

“Hey.”

“Looks like we’re roomies.” His voice is all full of whimsical wonder that Derek is amazed he can muster. He takes a long look at Tally’s sleeping form. “You want me to turn the TV off?”

“Noooo,” says the little boy next to Stiles. He has cannulas wrapped around his nostrils, an IV dripping into his skinny little arm, and bright green Despicable Me pyjamas that Tally also has a pair of in a drawer at home. Even in the dark, under the blueish glow of the TV, he looks pale as paper and just as delicate.

“Ben, we have neighbors now! We want them to like us, don’t we?”

“It’s alright,” Derek cuts in, looking at the heartbreak in the kid’s eyes. “She’s fast asleep.”

“You look like you could use some sleep yourself, big guy.”

“Working on it.”

“Well. Welcome to Room 597. As we say here, _sleep is for the weak_.” Ben giggles at this, but Derek notices Stiles tapping the Starbucks coffee on the bedside table-- a secret code that means s _leep can be dangerous_. It shouldn’t be, but it’s reassuring.

Stiles and Ben turn back to their TV set. Derek should probably shut the curtains, but it feels...it feels oddly comforting to have them there. Maybe it’s the sound of Ben’s little laugh, the gravel of Stiles’, or the glow of the TV behind his eyelids. He’s not sure, but he’ll take it, whatever it is that makes him relax. He feels glad for the first time in 48 hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains: Allusions to suicide, mentions of cancer, depictions of seizures, strong language, and depictions of surgery. Please remember that I AM NOT A DOCTOR and all medical jargon/conditions/symptoms come from my own shoddy research. If you know for a fact that I've gotten something waaaaay off, don't hesitate to let me know. 
> 
> [twinkwolf](www.twinkwolf.tumblr.com) is my tumblr.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really flattered at the response! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and kudos. Some of you hate me and that feels good.

As expected, Cora is immediately distrustful of the entire medical team assigned to Tally’s case.

“They’re only ranked #4 in the metropolitan area, Derek.” She has some article from a US health magazine pulled up on her iPhone. He ignores her, walking in a straight line toward the Starbucks. Stiles is a few paces ahead of them, already greeting the barista.

“It’s Sinai, Cora.”

“I’m just saying, we should go to the best place. We should go to Cornell.”

He comes up beside Stiles, mutters his coffee order, trying not to look Cora in the eye. He tells her,

“Let’s just get the biopsy results back first, alright?”

“How long will that take?”

Cora has almost more questions than him. It’s exhausting. For a second, he swaps glances with Stiles and there’s an understanding there.

Derek orders another coffee for Cora, who is barely paying attention to where she’s going, staring down at the damn iPhone. She’s been travelling all night, arrived first thing in the morning with Laura in tow, and bundles of things from the gift shop in the hospital lobby. “Didn’t have time to collect any new seashells," she’d said. Cora is a receptionist for a yoga studio on the beach in some tourist town off the coast of Costa Rica. She’d escaped from underneath Laura and Derek and New York the minute she turned 18, joining some South American volunteer program building houses along the Andes. Now she has a work visa and a tan that gets more severe each time he sees her.

“Derek,” she says, pulling his arm. “How long will it take for the biopsy results?”

At this point, Stiles must sense the anger bubbling under Derek’s skin. He’s about to open his mouth, to say something he’ll regret, probably, but Stiles cuts in.

“It depends on what they find. Different tissues take longer to process. Could be...three or four days. Maybe a week.”

Cora gives Stiles this look like,  _who asked you?_

Stiles hides his face behind the coffee cup.

The History department sent some stuff this afternoon. Now half the hospital room is littered with get-well-soon balloons and sad, colorful flowers. Derek wants to throw it all out, but Tally likes the attention and the decoration. Cora has left a mountain of things for Tally to occupy herself with. Derek is wiggled into the the vacant space beside her while she plays with the new DS game Cora brought.

“Am I still getting birthday presents?” she asks suddenly

“Of course you are, why wouldn’t you be?”

“Cause...there’s all this stuff…” she shakes the DS back and forth.

Derek actually smiles. Her birthday isn’t for another eight months. The look of genuine concern on her face strikes him. This is the sort of thing that she’s worried about and thank God for it. Thank God she hasn’t asked him much about anything else. He has a simple solution for this concern.

“Look, you’re probably going to get double the amount of presents this year. On top of all this stuff. Plus, there’s still Christmas.”

“Oooh, I forgot ‘bout Christmas.” She drops the DS. “Can I get a cat?”

“We’ll talk about it in December, alright?”

“But I reeeeeeallly want one.”

From across the room, Stiles laughs a bit, shaking his head back and forth like it’s all a big joke.

“Oh, you brought this upon yourself, dude.”

“When I go home, Dad’s gettin’ me a mousey. Like Ratatouille!” Ben suddenly says, directing it entirely toward Tally, who he’s taken a liking to.

“I have a hamster named Molly. She’s kinda like Ratatouille ‘cause she’s all grey.”

“Dad, can I have a hammer?” Ben asks. Stiles takes a long swig of coffee and throws his head back.

“It’s _hamster_ and we’ll talk about it.”

Tally stars to mutter something under her breath, something unintelligible. She lets the DS fall into her lap like her hands can’t hold it up any more.

“Tal?”

“Can...watch...Ratatouille?” is all she says before she starts seizing. Derek climbs swifty out of the bed.

“Can you page the nurse,” he tells Stiles, in a demanding voice, not phrasing it like a question.They told him to page the nurse when it happens because it’s going to keep happening. He gets that now, but he’ll never get used to it. Stiles is a blurred movement in the background, drawing the curtain between Ben and Tally shut. Derek is too busy trying to move things out of the bed so she doesn’t hurt herself on them. The DS drops to the floor.

It only lasts about thirty more seconds, and then everything goes quiet. Ben whimpers through the curtain, Stiles voice saying soothing things.

“It’s okay, buddy. Sometimes this happens to Tally.”

The nurse walks in. She keeps it calm, keeps it casual, asking him how long she was out this time. Tally is wide awake again after, looking for her DS. The nurse examines her, checks the charts, fills it out in the clipboard attached to the end of her bed.

“How you feelin’ honey?” she asks Tally.

“Okay,” she says quietly. Shyly. This is a whole new nurse. “Where’s Anhiti?”

“She had to go home for the night, babydoll.” The nurse touches two fingers to her neck gently and asks if it hurts. Tally says it doesn’t.

“How’s your noggin feel?” she says tapping her knuckles against her own head.

“Okay,” Tally says again in that same scared voice. Derek runs his hand over her forehead on instinct as she shifts a bit in the bed, lifting up her blankets. “I peed.”

“No biggie. Lets get’cha changed.”

He helps her get into new PJ’s while the nurse changes the sheets on the bed. With her hands on his shoulders, she steps into clean clothes and falls against Derek to whisper in his ear,

“Don’t tell Ben I wet the bed.”

Derek raises his pinky to hers and they cross. A promise.

Later that night, both the kids are fast asleep. Both the adults are awake, jonesing for more caffeine. The TV plays the nightly news-- bad shit. Some shooting that Derek feels totally disconnected from. Mayoral election scandals. The volume is on so low that it’s just images and words.

“I hate the news,” Stiles says under his breath.

“Turn it off.”

He does and then it’s just them. It’s been three days since Derek has moved to this room, slid into Ben and Stiles’s space like he belongs there. It’s been oddly comfortable. They tend to keep their curtains open. So the kids can talk, so they can swap toys, so they can argue about what Pixar Car is the best--- Mator or McQueen. Mostly, Derek likes that Tally has a friend here. He talked to one of her friend’s moms from school and asked them to hold off on visiting until “things are more settled.” He implied that they weren’t going to be in the hospital for very long. He doesn’t know why he did that. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to lie to.

“Was Ben scared today? After Tally--” he fades off, not wanting to say the word seizure again. He’s sick of hearing himself say it.

“A little. I broke it down for him. He’ll be alright.”

“Sorry...that was…I was--”

“Don’t apologize, Jesus. Never apologize. For anything.” His voice goes suddenly hard. In the dark, it’s the clearest thing Derek can make out. “You’re allowed to scream and yell. Punch vending machines.”

Derek scoffs, thinking of the chocolate milk incident.

“Are you sleeping here again tonight?” he asks Stiles when he hears the telltale sounds of the scratchy hospital blankets rubbing against skin.

“They wanted to set me up in the parents accommodation a while ago, but the insurance isn’t cutting it.”

“You can’t go home for a night? They have pagers for the parents, I thought…” Derek hasn’t wanted to consider the thought of going home yet, of being separated from her, but hasn’t been here longer than a week. There comes a point, though, where you can only live in a hospital room for so long before the nurses kick you out.

“Oh did we not--?” Stiles laughs, sharp and regretful. “Did we not mention we’re from out of town?” He rubs his face with his hands. “I really do need a good night’s sleep. Shit. Yeah, we’re all the way from Cali. We were on this waiting list. On a few waiting lists. Ben got bumped to see the pediatric cardiovascular guy at Stanford a few months ago. Then the Stanford guy wanted to move us to the Mount Sinai guy. They sent us out here in the medi-plane. Now we’re here.”

“How long have you been at this?”

Stiles takes a long moment to think.

“He’s had the condition since he was born, but… you know, back then it was all easy. Just meds and watching his heart rate, oxygen tanks at night in his room, taking it slow at the park. Doctor appointments, just once a month. We never had to stay over anywhere. It’s…” He fades off, but Derek knows he’s not finished. “I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought it just meant he wouldn’t be joining any sports teams in high school. But it’s...It’s gotten pretty bad...just over the last year, I guess. God, I don’t even know. How can I not know how long it’s been?”

“You’ve been sleeping in that goddamn pull out for a year?” Derek asks in awe.

“Shit, no. We’ve been here three weeks. Yeah. Three weeks. It’s not so bad. My Dad’s been flying out on the weekends, puts me up in his hotel to do laundry and...you know, shower. My friends, too, a few times. I’d rather be here anyway. It’s only been three weeks.”

He says three weeks like it’s a curse word, which it mostly is. For Ben, every day is another step closer to something bad. He sees it in Stiles’ eyes when he wakes up each morning, when he jerks at the sound of Ben’s lungs struggling to catch enough air. Every day, it’s like those lungs take in less and less. It must be hell to watch the sun go up and down like this. Waiting is the hardest part.

After a while, Derek awkwardly asks,

“Are you doing okay?”

To which Stiles replies,

“Honestly, Derek? No.” He laughs nervously. “But don’t tell Ben I said that.” 

Derek sticks out his pinky, even though Stiles can’t possibly see it in the dark. A promise.

The tension seeps out of the room after that, like dust being lifted, splintering into particles in the air. Derek removes himself of his own problems for a second or two, long enough to feel the burden of Stiles’ and it holds some clarity, some comfort. Maybe that’s sick of him to do, to get his own relief out of someone elses pain, but it doesn’t feel like selfishness. It’s more like a catharsis. They’re basically strangers, but Derek’s chest aches for him. With Laura and Cora, he has to tiptoe, can’t feel, can’t talk. Here, he feels as if he can say whatever he wants. He wants Stiles to say whatever he wants. He’s been sleeping a little easier every night they’re in this room.

The next morning, Stiles isn’t there when Derek wakes up. Tally pokes and pokes at Derek’s arm until his eyes open.

“Can I go on Ben’s bed and show him the Smash Bros?” she asks. He looks beyond her, to where Ben waits hopefully, legs crossed in the middle of a pile of blankets. She asks him like she’s proposing a sleepover. Derek clears his throat and sits up, working the stiffness out of his spine.

“I guess you can. But you have to sit up against his pillow.”

“In case I get scrambled eggs again?”

“What?”

“Thas’ what Ahniti calls it when I do that thing…” She pauses to wiggle back and forth very fast, mimicking her seizure. “Scrambled eggs.”

Ben giggles at this.

“Well, in case you get scrambled eggs, we need to make sure you have lots of pillows around.”

It shouldn’t be this much work to move a kid from one bed to another, but Derek has to uncoil the chords monitoring her and wheel the machine over to Ben’s side. Ben carefully moves to the other end of the bed so Tally can take his spot at the head of it. Derek gathers the pillows around her, framing her in with softness. It takes about as much work as planning a slumber party, and it’s only four feet away. Derek relaxes once Ben snuggles up closer to her, enthralled with the game.

Anhiti comes in for her rounds after that, smiles warmly at Derek, roses in her soft brown cheeks. She lifts his mood a little. Today her scrubs have little dragons.

“Aw, look at you babies all cuddled up,” she coos, walking toward the bed.

Tally rolls her eyes and huffs, edging away from Ben a little as if Anhiti had suggested he had cooties.

“We are not babies.” She sticks out her tongue and Ben giggles. Ben laughs at almost everything she says, hangs off every word like she’s another one of his favorite episodes of Little Einsteins.

“Don’t fight her on this one,” Derek tells the nurse.

Anhiti goes through her usual round of check up questions, checking the monitors, marking the clipboards. She’s halfway through examining some of Ben’s data that is beyond Derek when she tells him,

“You can take a breather if you want. They’re my last room for now, I’ll keep my eye on them.”

He’s worried that Tally is in too vulnerable a position to leave, but she looks so contented, firing her little thumbs against the buttons, narrating the game to Ben as he watches.

“I’ll be back in 10,” he tells her.

Tally doesn’t even acknowledge him leaving.

He finds Stiles, of course, at the food court in one of the empty tables. There’s a picked apart breakfast in front of him, barely touched. Derek’s stomach rumbles emptily. Food has become such an afterthought.

“The kids have set up fort on Ben’s bed,” he tells him, sitting across.

Stiles looks up from his phone, sets it aside. He looks a little eager.

“Your last name...it’s Hale, right?”

“Yeah…?”

Stiles shakes his head disbelievingly, eyebrows raised comically high.

“Of all the hospital rooms in all of the country…”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re from Beacon County. I knew I recognized your sister. She was a year above me at Beacon Elementary.”

At the mention of Beacon Hills, Derek’s skin tingles with danger. It’s rare that he talks about that place. Rare that he thinks about it. He still doesn’t fully understand. Stiles goes on.

“I knew I’d seen you somewhere...I thought it was just my brain playing tricks. Too much coffee, but no. I definitely remember you.”

“What’s your name?” Derek asks. He’s put away every face from Beacon Hills, every look of pity that passed him by on those small town streets, put them so far away in his mind that it’s overwhelming to try and sort through it now. He struggles to grasp recognition, but it doesn’t happen until Stiles says,

“Stilinski.”

And it pops almost audibly-- the glimpses of a buzz cut kid in the swarm of middle schoolers, picking Cora up from school in his Mom’s truck. The gangly, pubescent boy pacing around the police station that night of the fire, like he’d followed his dad to the station just to get in on the action. Lots of people knew him, the sheriff’s kid, a little shit, privileged by his dad’s status. Always riding his bike too fast, swerving around cars, shouting on dark streets with that little sickly Mccall kid in tow, too late at night for 12 year olds to be out rambling. Derek remembers hearing his mom yell on the phone that the sheriff’s kid was starting fires in their woods.

He tries to replace that image with the man in front of him, weathered and older, filled out in the arms and the shoulders, grown out hair and lines in his cheeks instead of baby fat dimples. The upturn of his nose is suddenly, worryingly familiar.

“You look different,” he ends up saying.

“What’s it been….ten years? SInce Cora moved, and you, I guess.” He doesn’t say _since the fire_ and Derek is thankful.

“Eight years. Tally was a baby.”

“Right. Tally like…”

“Like my mom. Talia.”

It’s getting into strange territory. These things only ever come up when Derek drinks, which he doesn’t do anymore for that reason-- his mother, his uncle, the fire and Kate. Beacon Hills is taboo. In the sober light of day, under the garish lights, with his daughter upstairs and doctors to his left, he gets disoriented. Stiles straightens his back.

“Sorry,” he says honestly. “You probably don’t want to talk about--”

“I don’t.”

It’s harsher than he meant, but it’s true. Stiles bounces back immediately.

“Small world, anyway. I’d say it’s fate, but that would be the sickest joke the universe has ever played.”

Coincidence or not, he can’t help but feel like it’s sort of...fitting? Right? There’s a layer beyond this hospital that pins Stiles and Derek next to each other, somehow. Lives running parallel, coming to some kind of juncture here. Fuck, Derek wishes he knew why that thought is so helpful, so soothing. It just is. It just feels better to reach across the table and snag some of Stiles’ uneaten toast because he knows he won’t mind.

Upstairs, Anhiti approaches them in the hall outside the room. She shares some kind kind of alien sounding information with Stiles, some kind of report of Ben’s status that Derek can’t decipher. Stiles holds his elbow, nodding like someone is giving him a lecture.

“Doctor Khouri is going to be in on Tuesday.” She leans forward, speaking a little lower. “Are you taking care of yourself?”

“Come on, I’m getting it from all angles here, Anhiti.”

“You need to get some sleep. You need to eat something that wasn’t made in the kitchens downstairs! You’re going to start to smell, you know.”

The other nurse, the one from last night, walks by at that moment, piping in,,

“Already starting to smell, honey.”

“I have to stay here.” Theres a wavering in his voice, an uncertainty.

“I want you both to go get yourselves in order tonight. You stay until the babies fall asleep, you come back before they get up, and it’s like it never happened. I know it’s hard at first, but I promise, this is the best way to do it. Nothing’s going to happen on our watch.”  

“You don’t know that,” Stiles retorts.

“Maybe not, but this is a hospital, babe. You gotta adjust, but you can’t stop functioning. That’s not helping anyone. I know it’s your job to take care of them. It’s our job, too.”

Stiles looks to Derek for backup, maybe. Support? Derek doesn’t know what to do. Tally’s brain is different than Ben’s heart. The doctor said there wouldn't be much damage from the seizures, just the pain of them. In that respect, he’s got less to worry on. A rational part of him knows that Tally’s heart won’t suddenly stop beating in the night-- not without warning. Stiles can’t say the same thing. Rationally, Ben’s heart could end on a beat whenever it feels like giving up the fight.

Despite this, he nods at Stiles to reassure him.

“Can you text updates? I just.. I just don’t want to be lying there all night not knowing--”  

“I’ll fill you in on every round.”

“I guess I could grab a room at America’s Best,” he says, running a hand nervously through his hair. It feels vaguely like Anhiti is a friend inviting them to a party they’re reluctant to go to.

Derek is still trying to wrap his head around how he’ll possibly get to sleep at home tonight without Tally, but the thought of Stiles in some lonely hotel room, worrying though the night, is too wrong to let pass. It springs forth from his mouth before he can think to much about it. He’s usually more contemplative than this, more cautious, choosing his words wisely.

“There’s no way you’re staying at America’s Best. I have a spare room.”

Stiles looks like he forgot Derek was standing there, blinking up at him.

“You don’t have to--”  

“There, it’s settled. One night off. Both of you, I beg.” Anhiti throws her hands up in the air, walking back to the nursing station as if she’s done her great duty for the day.

Stiles turns to Derek, looking shell shocked.

“Are you sure it’s okay.”

Derek takes a deep breath, gearing up to go back in the room. He doesn’t look back at Stiles.

“I’m not really sure about anything, but you can stay with me tonight. Whenever you want. The room is just sitting there.”

“Thanks, man, I--” Stiles puts his hand on Derek’s arm, getting him to look back. “I mean it. Thanks.” The arm stays there longer than it should. Derek can’t force himself to move away.

Tally and Ben fall asleep much faster than anticipated that night. The sun has barely gone down by the time they turn off the lights. Derek kisses her head, her cheek, tightens the blankets around her arms, and presses Lola close to her chest. Stiles has been in the corner, staring at Ben for the last hour. Theres a few duffle bags packed at his feet. His leg bounces restlessly. That’s something Derek has noticed. He’s always moving, fidgeting, fighting stillness. At first he thought it was all the Starbucks, but they haven’t had any coffee today.

“You ready?” Derek takes one of Stiles bags-- laundry that he can do at the house.

Stiles puffs out his breath, sitting up and rocking forward all in one motion toward the door, without looking back at the kids.

“Yeah, lets just go.”

It’s like ripping off a bandaid.

They’re in a daze on the subway home.

“Feels like it’s been ten years since I took public transport,” Stiles says, looking around at the people. There are groups of nicely dressed girls going to the clubs downtown, and businessman commuting home too late, and homeless people sleeping with plastic bags in their arms. There’s no kids. No one’s wearing scrubs. He glances at his phone about every thirty seconds, even though there’s no service underground.

Derek’s brownstone is all dark when they finally arrive. He flicks the lights on to dim. It’s nice not to be under fluorescents.

“I’ll throw these in the wash,” he tells Stiles, taking his bags. “Bathroom’s through there. Towels are in the bottom cabinet.”

“”Sure.” He looks hesitant, holding his phone in one hand. “Could you watch the phone and--”

“I’ll come get you. If it rings.”

He nods once, swallowing.

When Derek finishes with the laundry, he decides to make dinner. He’s exhausted, they both are, but he figures sleeping will be easier with food in their stomach that wasn’t saran wrapped before they ate it. The sound of the shower lulls him into an automatic state as he chops kale and heats a pan, throws some fish and rice together. He keeps one eye trained on both their phones sitting on the counter.

When Stiles comes out he has his clothes in a bundle and a towel wrapped around his waist. His chest is mostly hairless, scrubbed red from a too-hot shower, speckled with water droplets, a cloud of steam behind him. Derek stares for maybe a little too long.

“Figured I should wash these, too.” His clothes. Right.

“You can borrow something of mine for now.”

It shakes Derek a little, makes his stomach tingle. It’s dim and intimate in the shared space, the way it can’t be in a hospital room. He escapes upstairs to his closet to get something for Stiles, his heart beating wildly in his chest. He usually buries these things, the small attractions that hit him on the street.  There had been flirting with Tally’s kindergarten teacher once-- a beautiful woman with hips that Derek wanted to rest his hands on. He remembers consciously cutting it off, stopping it dead in its tracks before it even got anywhere. It’s what he does, dividing and conquering emotions until he’s a master of them.

Tally is his weak spot. Tally is the real master. Maybe it’s her being sick that has left him defenseless, but all he can think about rubbing his cheek along Stiles’ chest, just the way he was downstairs, wet and clean, smelling like Derek’s body wash. Something makes him want to chase this. It’s so wildly inappropriate for the situation they’re in. Derek shoves it down with everything else, feeling full to the brim.

They eat dinner in relative silence, sitting at the kitchen island.

“So you haven’t asked,” Stiles says around a mouthful of food.

“Asked you what?”

“Where Ben’s mom is.”

“Oh...I didn’t think it was relevant.” She’s not there.

“It is and it isn’t.” He takes a sip of water before continuing. “I don’t really know who his mother was.”

“He’s adopted?” Derek is surprised because he thought they looked alike. Maybe that’s just how parents and kids end up, though, mirroring each other. Laura is always saying Tally is a miniature version of him, even though she looks more like Kate.

“I was in LA for a while, after the academy. Such a rookie, my god. First day on the job, we busted this dealer’s house-- just small time guy, kitchen-made meth. Ugly shit. Ben was just this baby someone left there, on a mattress upstairs. Probably too high to remember they even had a kid. He’d almost outgrown this onesie he was in, like, the buttons were popping open. It was a hospital onesie, one they give you when they discharge the newborns, but he was already 4 months old. Probably the only clothes he’d ever worn. And the diaper rash...all the way up his back.”

“Jesus,” Derek mutters. He pushes his plate away, finished with food.

“It was my first week, I know, but I just...couldn’t let him go, you know? They tell us we have to stay rational in those situations. Shut it off so we don’t get so mad we shoot someone. So we don’t end up adopting all the latchkey kids we find. That didn’t really work for me.”

“They let you adopt him?”

“Foster care for a while. It helped that I lived my girlfriend at the time, but she split after a few weeks. Malia didn’t sign up for it so I don’t blame her. Ben was a lot of work. After a year and a bit, the social worker was able to vouch and I got him for keeps. We moved back with my dad in Beacon Hills when he started showing symptoms.”

Derek thinks about all the trouble he went to keep Tally out of the system after the fire. The social workers. The courtrooms. The paperwork and evaluation and fucking skepticism of everyone around him.

“You’re probably thinking _why go to all the trouble? If I knew he was damaged goods, why make it so hard for myself_?” Stiles spits suddenly, like blasphemy.

“I wasn’t thinking that. I’m in no position to think that.”

“Some people do. They think just because I picked Ben myself, it’s my fault for--” he chokes on his words a bit. “It’s my own fault for any pain...any pain that I go through--”

“Stiles,” Derek commands. “I don’t think that.”

Stiles sets his face in his hands. He looks so fucking weak. So small. Derek grabs his forearm and grips tight.

“You think people don’t talk about Tally like that? You live in Beacon Hills, you know what happened. Her mother’s a killer. Her mother killed our whole family, so how could I stand to have her around knowing that she’s half Kate? But I didn’t really decide to keep her. She’s mine and that’s it. That’s all there is. Ben’s yours and you probably didn’t have much of a say in it either.”

Stiles shakes his head, hand coming down on top of Derek’s for a second.

“Sorry,” he says, blush creeping up his cheeks. “I get overly defensive, I think.”

“Never apologize for anything,” Derek echoes.

They switch over the laundry, check the phones for texts from Anhiti, leave the dishes in the sink. The kids haven’t stirred, no notable changes, no danger tonight. He shows Stiles the rarely used spare bedroom. Laura sleeps here when she’s too drunk to find her way home sometimes, but other than that, the room is blatantly ignored, kind of cold. Stiles bids him goodnight, thanks him a thousand times over.

When he hits his mattress, Derek sighs so deeply into his pillow that he thinks a bit of his soul leaves. The bed is familiar, but at the same time, strange. Maybe that hospital chair has grown on him. He sure fucking hopes not.

After half an hour of stirring, not touching sleep, Derek notices a creek in the floorboards of the hall. It’s too heavy to be Tally. Every part of him wishes it was her coming to wake him up from a nightmare. She did that once, claimed that he’d been yelling in his sleep, brought him Molly to pet and hold until he felt better. The memory stings like pressing down on a bruise.

A few taps at the door come. Derek tells him to come in.

“What’s wrong?” Derek asks, looking at the phone in Stiles’ hand, trying not to look at his chest. Bare again. A pair of Derek’s flannel pyjamas hanging low on his hips.

“Nothing’s wrong, I just--” He fidgets again, scratching at his stomach, leaning from one foot to the other.

“You need something?”   _Anything_ , he thinks dangerously. _I’ll give you anything you need._

“It’s stupid…”

“It’s not. What is it?”

“I haven’t really slept alone in...a while. Too quiet.”

“Do you want…? Derek shuffles over automatically, making space in the bed.

“Is that weird?”

“Probably, but…I don’t care.”

Wordlessly, Stiles starts toward the mattress and he wills his heart to calm down, calm down, calm down. It’s not the time or the place. This is innocent. Friendship.

Stiles settles into the spot next to him. No one has ever slept there before, no one important. He’s a warm ball of fiery energy next to him. Derek thinks it’s going to be impossible now to ever lose consciousness. He focuses on keeping to his own space.

After another ten minutes of quiet breathing, a shift happens when Stiles slides his hand across Derek’s upper torso. He feels almost grateful for the break in the tension, turning a little so Stiles can move his knee in, so Stiles can rest his head over on Derek’s pillow. They don’t talk. They don’t dare talk. But it’s loud in the room, loud when their skin glides against each other’s. With Stiles totally pressed against his back, the room goes dark and his heart finally calms. It’s better this way. It’s so much better this way. He could sleep for a thousand years like this.

“‘Night,” Stiles breathes against his neck. Lips so close. Lips, lips, lips. He wants to turn over and touch them. He can’t do it. Instead, they sleep for six straight hours. It’s almost a miracle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains depictions of seizures, mentions of the Hale fire, mentions of Kate Argent, mentions of past infant abuse/negligence, mentions of drugs. 
> 
> [twinkwolf](twinkwolf.tumblr.com) is my tumblr.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow sorry this took forever. i'm going to try and finish the story in the next few weeks. pls forgive me

_“Oooooh, we’re halfway there, WHOA OH--”_

_“Living on a pear!”_

“ _Prayer_ , Ben. It’s living on a _prayer_. You can’t live on pears alone-- you need protein.”

Ben laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. It’s early one morning, before Tally is awake, and Derek has brought the coffee in from his commute to the hospital. Stiles looks sleep rumpled and as tired as the day Derek met him. He’s opted not to go home with Derek these past few days, and Derek knows that it’s because he needs to be with Ben, but he can’t help but feel the itching sensation like he’d done something wrong, like they’d done something wrong sleeping in the same bed that night, that he’s avoiding him and making sure it doesn’t happen again on purpose.

Derek, on the other hand, was advised to sleep at home this week by Anhiti, Laura, Cora, and even the neurologist who stopped in on Thursday. Not to mention Tally, who complains that he snores and that she “doesn’t like sharing a room with him” in a huff. She never was a kid who climbed into Derek’s bed during thunderstorms.

As if she knows he’s there, Tally wakes up when he sits in the chair next to her bed.

“Morning, baby.” He sets a container of fruit salad on the wheel out table for her to eat.

She yawns a bit, still knocked out from yesterday’s seizure which lasted a little longer than the others. It’s been scratching at the back of Derek’s mind all night. He doesn't want it to get worse, whatever it is. Just please don’t let it get worse.

“Bon Jovi fans, huh?” he asks Stiles as he hums into the next chorus. Ben seems to know most of the words to _Dead or Alive._  
  
“Oh, not me. I’m more of a Beastie Boys guy. Ben’s super into hair metal, isn’t that right? Tell Derek who you were for Halloween last year.”

Ben sticks his tongue out of his head as far as he can, shouting around his tongue,

“Gene Simmons!”

“Your kid knows who Gene Simmons is?”

“Who’s Dean Spinnin?” Tally asks, stabbing a piece of watermelon violently with her plastic fork.

“ _Gene Simmons_ is a scary rock and roll god who can spit fire and wears a lot of black and white make up.”

“You forgot the reality show,” Derek adds, remembering that god-awful scripted _Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels_ mess that Laura was obsessed with after _The Osbournes_ was cancelled.

“Nuh-uh, he’s the hottest band in da’ world!” Ben yells, offended.

“Sorry, Melissa showed him her CD collection one Christmas and now he just loves anything 80’s metal. KISS. Bon Jovi. Poison. I don’t understand it-- I thought you guys were supposed to listen to...the Wiggles or Barney or something,” Stiles says, ruffling Ben’s hair. Ben is in the middle of an air guitar solo.

“The Wiggles is stupid. I like Iggy Azalea,” Tally says defiantly.

“Cora lent you her iPod, didn’t she?” Derek asks, wiping a bit of fruit from her chin with his thumb.

Tally shrugs like she’ll never tell.

Throughout the day, Stiles and Derek are mostly quiet. Their eyes meet by accident a few times. Derek is imagining things, he’s sure of it, sure that it’s in his head because all the looks are coded with something else, something secretive that shouldn’t be happening in a room with their children lying the beds. It’s not sexual tension, nothing to that degree. It’s miniscule, under a microscope, barely there in the afternoon sun through the high windows of this crowded hospital room. It’s something scary and unopened.

The kids babble on, watch television like it’s a snow day and they’re perfectly at ease to do just that. It’s amazing how confined to the beds they’ve become. Tally is usually rolling ball of energy that drags Derek places, forces him to change the scenery always. She’s adopted Ben’s habit of lying still, which is troubling.

Ben has a few technical difficulties with his oxygen tank toward the end of the day. A tube gets twisted or a valve gets loose and he doesn’t receive enough air for a few minutes. A nurse runs in when some machine starts to beep on their side of the room. Derek jerks out of his trance-- he’d been staring at the wallpaper for too long.

Stiles is angrier than he’s ever seen him because Ben is fast losing his awareness, slipping in and out to preserve the little oxygen in his blood. It’s like that outburst at Derek’s house, the one all accusing and full of worry.

“How did this even happen? Isn’t it your job to make sure this doesn’t happen? Are you kidding me?”

He raises his voice, streamlines questions as the nurse works to correct it. She looks like she might cry by the time she gets the tank working properly, apologizing profusely, triple checking Ben’s vitals. Stiles relaxes when everything settles back down

An hour later, he says,

“I should go apologize to that nurse.”

The _never apologize for anything rule_ falls short sometimes. The other day, Derek had been almost rough with the neurologist when she told him the biopsy was still being processed. He’d stopped her from walking away by grabbing her shoulder, just trying to get her to turn around, which scared her, brought up her haunches. All he wanted was to know when their fate was going to be decided, but he couldn’t get the words out and she calmly told him that he should take three deep breaths.

“She’ll understand,” he tells Stiles, though he sees it’s eating away at him. Derek had followed the neurologist to her office in order to pardon himself for being so difficult. It’s hard to feel unselfish when all Derek wants is for the whole medical staff in this hospital to stop what they’re doing and help.  
  
It’s been ten days. Ten days of this. It all feels so alien and destroyed. It’s almost post-apocalyptic. At night in his big empty brownstone, Derek checks in on Tally’s untouched room and it’s like the world has been tipped over, like it has poured out the things that make Derek’s life real. He’s a walking zombie on the train to the hospital. He only feels semi-there when he sits down in the regretfully familiar chair beside Tally who seems almost unfazed by the last two weeks. He’s not sure if that’s comforting or if it makes him more worried than ever that this is changing them.

And then there’s Stiles.

Those feelings are an outlier. Separate. Wrong, so entirely wrong of Derek to think. The other night he fell asleep with come drying on his hand and a layer of shame settling all over his body like algae. The algae has been growing, turning him mossy and disgusting for those moments he imagines he could take Stiles somewhere in the dark to forget about their troubles.

 _Forget about their kids_ , some horrible voice says in the back of his mind. It sounds a bit like Kate.

It’s not true. It’s not true. It will never be true. Derek is just tired and that’s all it his. He’s at his weakest right now. Maybe his weakest ever. If he used to have an army inside him, fighting off those militant thoughts that have always tried to break through, than the army has been decimated.

But maybe he does long for an escape. Somewhere where death, the threat of it, doesn’t exist. Does that mean he wants to run? Maybe he should go straight to hell for even breaching that thought. Truthfully, he’d never be able to. Truthfully, he’d bring her with him everywhere he goes. Truthfully, he just wants his old fucking life back, and it’s only been ten days.

He’s been spending too much time letting the wheels spin in his head. He has to get out of it before he thinks himself into a coma as deep as Peter’s.

Which is why he’s thankful for Laura when she brings dinner for everyone that night-- pasta that Tally loves from an expensive diner in the touristy stretch of Time’s Square. She’s brought Stiles and Ben something, too, like they’re all a unit, which he supposes they are. They eat gathered around Ben’s bed, listening to Laura’s story about a student who came to class wearing a bathrobe that day.

A light tap comes from the door.

“Mmm, that smells good!” It’s the sharp face of the neurologist. She’s dressed in a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans instead of the standard scrubs and white coat, her hospital is ID hanging around her neck. She looks like she’s about to head home.

Derek stares at her as she makes nice with Tally and gives Ben a high five for slurping his entire spaghetti noodle in one go. Then she turns to Derek.

“I have some good news. Mind if we step outside?”

Laura stands up with him like he knew she would and Derek lets her butt in because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He only hears the word, good, as if it’s some kind of foghorn in the distance.

“Tally’s sample came back clean. No signs of cancer, just a benign tumor like we’d hoped.”

She tells them the tumor is in a “convenient area” for removal. She tells them that Tally’s symptoms, the seizures, should disappear. She tells them that she has surgery the day after tomorrow, recovery for the next few weeks after that. She tells them they have every reason to believe that the tumor won’t grow back, that it was an anomaly, something they can put behind them. Derek takes a hard, shaking breath of air, speechless.

Of course, Laura does all the speaking for him. She rambles thanks and launches herself at Derek, tears in her eyes.

“Oh, thank God,” she keeps saying. “Thank God.”

“The pre-op team will be by tonight to walk you through the procedure, and Tally. You won’t be allowed in the room this time, I’m afraid, but we’ve got an excellent staff here, Mr. Hale. The odds are very good. Excellent, really.”

Derek can feel the weight disintegrating off his back, hiking him into an upright position, pulling clear breaths through his lungs, which no longer feel filled with sand. Everything is suddenly in motion. He thanks her, but it sounds small. He envisions going home. Finally, going home with Tally on his hip like the day they first moved into their house, the day they got their first fresh start. He thanks her again.

Laura’s ramblings in his ear are disrupted by the sudden presence of Stiles in the doorway. The neurologist seems to take this as her cue to leave, bidding them good night and stalking to the nursing station.

Stiles leans against the door, a cautious smile painted on.

“So she’s going to be okay?”

Laura excitedly brushes past them to smother Tally in unwanted affection. The two of them look on the scene as Tally rubs spaghetti sauce all over Laura’s mouth when she tries to kiss her. Ben’s laugh is a constant.

“Yeah. She’s going to be okay.” Saying it is like coming home.

Stiles squeezes Derek’s shoulder for a long moment. He looks down, nodding, then shaking his head, then nodding again like he can’t decide what to say. He goes with,

“Amazing. I’m…” and he looks down the hall, “I think I’m gonna grab a coffee. Watch Ben?”

And he’s gone, just walking steadily toward the elevators. Derek thinks it’s oddly curt, lacking in something, but Tally lures him back into the room when Laura begins tickling her sides. He rescues her and sits on the side of the bed, cleaning the spaghetti off her mouth with a kleenex.

“Aunt Laura says we get to go home!” Tally says.

“Soon. We get to go home soon.” He gives Laura a disciplining look for misleading her.

“Oh. Well, that’s okay. Can Ben sleepover when we go home?”

The answer to that question is more complicated than possible to explain to an eight year old. Right now he can promise Tally all the time in the world. He can’t do the same for Ben and that realization hits him like a ton of bricks.

Derek knows what’s really wrong once he gets a look at Laura’s phone, which says it’s 9:00 PM. The Starbucks downstairs is closed early today, so why would Stiles leave for coffee? He knows him well enough that he’s sure he’d never settle for the brewed crap the vending machine serves.

“Keep your eye on them, I’ll be right back,” he tells Laura, moving to follow Stiles downstairs.

He finds him with his palms flat on the surface of a table in the middle of the deserted cafeteria. One of the lights above them flickers on and off as he walks toward him and it’s all so ominous that Derek is terrified of what’s happening. His are shoulders curled, neck bent, head hanging between them like he can’t support it. Derek pauses before he gets too close.

“Listen--” he tries to say, unsure.

Stiles turns around with a jump, like he hadn’t heard Derek’s footsteps and maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’s drowning right now. The look in his eyes says so.

“You should be upstairs,” Stiles says. He sounds coarse.

“I know, but you...I don’t understand. What’s wrong?” It’s a stupid question and Derek wishes he could take it back.

“Derek,” he sounds exacerbated. “Don’t think that I’m not happy for you, please, please don’t think that-- Jesus Christ!” He grabs his hair, pulls it. “Of course I’m happy. Tally is healthy and it’s fucking amazing, it’s so amazing, Derek. That little girl shouldn’t be here, I--”

Derek thinks he’s having an argument with himself. He thinks he might understand now.

“But Tally’s okay and Ben isn’t, and you’re not happy.”

Those words seem to break Stiles a little and then he completely loses it, loses whatever thin piece of thread was keeping him upright. A ragged, destroyed sounding sob bursts between them. He’s never really seen Stiles cry. It’s something they’ve hidden. Derek doesn’t cry ever and it’s because he’s not sure he’d be able to stop if he ever started, but that first night, trying to get that stupid chocolate milk for Tally, he’d come so close to deconstructing. Stiles was there for him then. Stiles has been at this longer. He’s been putting on the brave face, making nice, keeping positive. Maybe it’s been years since he’s broken down. Derek won’t run away from him.  
  
Derek goes right to him. He wraps his arms around him tightly, holding him tightly, like family. Stiles fusses against his shirt, muffling the sounds in Derek’s shoulder. He’s soaked in tears and past caring about how appropriate it is or isn’t. He just wants Stiles to be okay. They might fuse together, they’re gripping so tightly.

After a few moments, Stiles holds him back, grips on and burrows deep in the place between Derek’s head and shoulder. He smooths back Stiles hair, rocking slightly, cheek rubbing against cheek. He gets his arms around him again and just presses like he’s wanted to for so long. Stiles frames their heads with one arm, closing them in, and waps the other around Derek’s waist and they stay like that for minutes. Softly, Derek presses his lips to the side of Stiles’ face, to the smooth skin on his cheek. If they just moved their heads a few inches, they’d be kissing and it would be so easy.

Stiles is the first to pull away, still trying to breathe through his sadness. He looks directly into his eyes. They’re bloodshot and watery, and bright with flecks of yellow and gold. Tears on his cheeks still. Derek is afraid to talk, afraid to move, afraid to look away. A long moment passes where nothing happens, but it feels like everythin

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Stiles whispers.

“I know...I know, but--” Derek can’t breathe.

“It would be selfish. It’s selfish of us.”

Derek can’t really argue that. “Maybe...maybe a little. You know I don’t expect you to drop everything and…” While Derek struggles to say what he means, Stiles takes a step away from him, disentangling their arms.

Stiles turns his back, runs his hands through his hair. He sniffles a little like he’s still breaking down the middle and suddenly Derek feels the hot sting of guilt pouring down his spine for complicating this.

“Derek, you don’t even know how much I-- how much me and Ben needed you guys. The last year has been just...so brutal and this city has been so cold and grey and smoggy. You made it so much better. And I’m already screwed because I’m thankful that you’re in this hell hole with me. Can you believe that? That’s selfish enough...and now we-- you…” He looks at Derek’s lips for a long time like he wants to kiss him again. Every part of Derek wishes he would.

“Stiles, I know you would never wish Tally was more sick.”

“No. Never. I just... wish it was different. A different situation. But it’s not-- we can’t do this here.”

“Why not?”

Stiles just watches him for a few seconds, chewing on his lip. His left foot taps erratically on the linoleum. He says,

“Isn’t it enough to just leave it the way it is? You know? Just be here for each other?”

“It’s not enough,” he says. Derek is the selfish one.

Stiles runs another frustrated hand through his hair before he leaves, saying,

“I’m sorry.”

Derek collapses into one of the empty cafeteria chairs when he’s out of sight. Everything Stiles said was right, and still, Derek just wants to chase after him, pull him in his arms, pull him into his life. He wants to wake up to the sound of Tally and Ben arguing over the TV in the living room. He wants to wake up to Stiles and his lips and his body, those long limbs curled into Derek’s. It burns through him how much he wants it and it kills him that they can’t have it because Ben can’t even breathe and Stiles can’t sleep and Tally will have her head cut into and everything will be different now that he knows what he wants. Now that he knows he can’t have it. Maybe it will be the worst. Maybe Ben will die and Stiles will go back to California. Derek will come out of it with a broken heart and Stiles’s heart will cease to exist at all.

He doesn’t see Stiles for the rest of the night. The kids are asleep when Derek comes back upstairs. Like always, he kisses Tally’s head before he goes, pulls the sheets a little more tightly against her. He glances over at Ben’s bed, at his small chest rising with little breaths. He moves around to that side of the room and, without really thinking about it, tucks him in as well.

Laura watches him suspiciously for the whole train ride home.  
  
“What’s going on with you and Stilinski?”

Derek sighs because as much as it’s wracking his brain, he doesn’t want to talk about it with Laura.

“Please mind your own business.”

“Well, that just gives you away, little brother. Have you two been…?” She makes a crude kind of gesture and a woman sitting across from them gives them a judging look.

“Jesus, Laura, no. And stop that-- we’re in public.”

“I think it’s sweet. It’s such a meet cute story. Sharing a hospital room, your kids fall in love, _you_ fall in love…”

Derek runs his hand over his entire face. Laura has a habit of seeing right through him and shining a spotlight on the most private parts she finds.

“You know what your problem is? You make everything romantic. There's nothing _cute_ about the situation. Do you even know how sick Ben is? Do you know he could die any minute? It’s not going to work out. Drop it.”

She goes quiet for the rest of the ride because she knows she’s touched a nerve. When her stop comes, she turns to him before stepping out onto the platform.

“Derek...you should know better than anyone that you can be in love with something even when the goddamn world is falling apart.”

***

That night, sleep is impossible. He’s resigned to lying there until morning because every time he closes his eyes, he thinks about what went wrong and he wants to curl in on himself. He misses his daughter. Whenever he’s stressed, it’s easy to sink down on the floor with Tally and build complex lego tower, or help her cut the hair on all her barbies, or let her fall asleep on his chest while they watch a movie past her bedtime on the couch. He considers stealing one of her stuffed animals for the night before he realizes how sad that would be.

He doesn’t get much of a chance to tire himself out. A furious knocking comes from downstairs. He doesn’t even throw on a shirt, just lunges down the stairs two at a time, heart in his throat because It’s bad news. It has to be. It’s Cora here to tell him that something went wrong at the hospital, that he has to come right away, that Tally is--

But when he opens the door, it’s not the Cora or the doctors, or the police. It’s Stiles. He looks wrecked...worse than before.

“I need to fucking kiss you,” he says.

Derek just reaches out for his hand to pull him inside.

Stiles comes in, kicks the door shut, and pulls Derek’s mouth down to his in one movement. Something relaxes in Derek’s chest as soon as he tastes him. Their lips lock in one short breath. It tastes like sadness, sweetness, and salt. For the first time in forever, he has no trouble opening himself up, letting him in, letting his tongue part Stiles lips until they’re sharing hot breath. He presses him into the door and crowds his space. Stiles’s clothes are lined with sweat as if he ran here, but Derek slips his hand inside to touch his stomach, to feel Stiles twitch against the pads of his fingers. They just keep kissing in short and frantic breaths, trying to go deeper than possible, trying to swallow mouthfuls of each other. Derek’s heart is fucking breaking from how good it feels to do this.  
  
“Upstairs,” Stiles whispers into his neck. He breathes him in like fresh air, nose dragging along Derek’s bare collarbone.

He kisses him into his mattress, right into the place where he slept the other night. He has to hold back all the things he wants to say. You belong here, in this bed, you belong with me, I want to take care of you. Please stay.

He makes a quick effort of taking off his clothes. He hasn’t been naked with someone since...a long time, and it’s nerve wracking, but he peels the layers away with focus, heart quickening. Stiles looks as unsure as him, settling down in the bed. They kiss for long minutes, breathing the same air. Their skin makes a smooth sound when it slides against the sheets, against each others. He feels Stiles’ leg curve up around Derek’s hip, pressing their pelvises together. The sensation pops in the room and they both let out a short gasp, driving forward to meet the friction instinctually.

He can feel the press, the outline of Stiles’ cock against his belly, still trapped in the boxer briefs. Tentatively, he trails his tongue over Stiles’ pulse, down to his collar, down to his chest. He pulls Stiles closer so he can mouth at his nipple, hard and sensitive between his teeth. The sounds Stiles makes are too new, too overwhelming. Derek’s own cock twitches at the sound.

“I want to make you come,” he whispers.

“Fuck,” Stiles hisses. He can’t keeps still.

They pull apart for a second. Stiles turns so that he’s on his back, looking at Derek beside him. His cheeks are splotched with red, breath coming out hard. He keeps looking at Derek as he lifts up his hips, pulls down the briefs to show him his cock. Derek reaches out to touch him immediately.

He hasn’t done this since college, but he knows how to make it good for him. He closes his grip, slides his hand along the length of him and twists around his wet, bright red cockhead. Stiles arches back, eyes almost rolling back in his head.

“Does it feel good?” Derek palms himself, achingly wet and hard in his underwear, but he doesn’t really want this to be about him. He wants Stiles to feel something good for once. He wants to be the one to give him relief.

“Yessss,” Stiles can barely get the words out.

He pumps faster, just watching, just listening to the way Stiles practically chokes on air. He watches Stiles widen his legs, the muscles in his thighs straining. He’s close and Derek wants to touch every part of him, so he trails his other hand lower until he can press a dry finger against the tight ring of muscle there. Stiles swears and arches, comes all over his hips and thighs while Derek slows down. He looks so pink and bright and beautiful.  
  
After, Stiles finishes Derek with his hand, and he pulls Stiles in for a kiss right before he comes because he wants to taste him, wants him all around, hitting every sense. He might be a little obsessed. The orgasm rips him in half and puts him back together again as he pulses into Sties hand. 

They clean up with a washcloth and stay naked in bed for a while. At first, they don’t talk, just wind their fingers together loosely. Stiles tangles their feet up in the sheets. It smells like sex and linen and Stiles’ voice is rough as he asks Derek,

“Can you tell me about Kate? I read the police report when I was younger. I mean, it was…probably the worst thing that ever happened in Beacon Hills. But I don’t really understand why she did it. I’ve always wondered.”

Derek doesn’t tense up, surprisingly. Maybe it’s because he’s naked with someone, and all his guards are down, or maybe it’s because he’s just with Stiles and what Laura said was right. It’s possible to feel things other than pain even when the worst is happening.  
  
“She got pregnant. It was... I was 18, you know? I worshiped her and I think I wanted to believe that she knew what she was doing. But she was always changing her mind. She was Kate. She was all over the place. She would get...angry, violent, and then flip the switch and be all smiles and take me on nice dates. One week, we’d be sitting in the waiting room at the abortion clinic. The next week, we were shopping for onesies at the Baby Gap. My parents weren't happy with the situation. She was older. In college. They sat us down and started grilling her with all these questions. Where are we going to live? How are we going to support it? Kate freaked out. I don’t think she ever really thought about the future. I think it started destroying her, the whole pregnancy. The next time I saw her she gave birth and the doctors tried to get her to sign the birth certificate,but she refused and she told me ‘take it. take it. it’s yours. i don’t fucking want it.’" He's quiet for a second, thinking about the last time he saw Kate's face. "You know the rest." 

“She set the fire a few nights after that.”

“I was lucky I got out. I was sleeping in the living room with Tally on my chest. She’d been crying all night and really hungry and I kept having to get up to warm the bottles so I just stayed downstairs with her. I was the closest to the door.”

Sometimes Derek thinks about waking to the smoke, to the shrill sound of Tally’s screams. It was blinding. It was everywhere. He stumbled breathless to the door and down the steps and into the woods with Tally in his arms and he didn’t look back until the sheriff found him out there with the baby, in his pajamas.

"I don't understand how someone can just do that." Stiles sounds frustrated. He blinks up at the ceiling. 

“I think it was a sickness. I think she needed help. Now she’s getting it.”

Sometimes he thinks about revenge. Sometimes he dreams of his mother’s eyes and of Kate’s neck and wrapping his hands around it, choking out her life like she did with his family, but he always wakes to Tally. Tally doesn’t deserve two monsters for parents.

“How do you do it?” Stiles says it quietly, but it weighs a thousand pounds. “How do you even...how do you keep waking up in the morning when something like that happens?”

Derek explains it the best he can. 

“It starts out big. It’s so big that you can’t even think. All I know is that it doesn’t get bigger-- that’s impossible. It only gets smaller. You think about it every day, but it gets small enough that there's room for more." 

They’re quiet for a long time, far from sleep. Stiles drops his head over to Derek’s chest and breathes in. He feels the wetness of tears on his skin.

“I’m so scared he’s going to die. I don’t know what to do.”

“I know.”.

 It feels a bit like that night in the woods, where he’s covered in soot, safe with Tally in the trees. But now he’s running back into the house, running after Stiles and Ben like never did when his family was burning. It hurts and he can hardly breathe, but he can’t leave them. He can’t do that twice in one lifetime. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> twinkwolf is my tumblr


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